Ecole Nationale Research Articles

technology and culture Book Reviews 1047 ited survey photographs; and the National Military Parks showed photographs of Civil War battlefields. This book is not an archaeological effort to recover the images that appeared in Chicago in 1893; Brown’s topic is the exhibition itself, and the ways in which the photographs promoted the interests of their original sponsors. Her argument is most impressive when it shows the flaws in the myth of the objectivity of the photograph by using the material presented to the 1893 audiences, for whom that myth retained its power. Because Brown ties her theoretical discus sions firmly to actual historical evidence, Contesting Images successfully spans the distance between present understanding and past belief. The resulting tension endows the text with narrative momentum rare in a historical work. In summary, Brown quotes the popular Gilded Age critic Marianna Griswold Van Rensselaer, who encouraged her reader to “go to the fair wholly conscienceless . . . like a human kodak,” seeking pleasure, not analysis (p. 113). Contesting Images enables us to grasp the meta phor, and use it. We need not condemn photographic documents for their pretense to a “conscienceless” state, nor simply expose them as illusory, manipulative, or false. Brown shows how to place these documents within a larger system of illusion that received its most emphatic realization at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. This insightful, well-written book is certain to become part of stan dard bibliographies on the White City, on the history of photography, and on the emergence of America’s national identity at the turn of the century. Mary Panzer Dr. Panzer, curator of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, has written on the relationship between photography, art, and documentary image making in late-19th-century America. Her most recent work appears in Eakins and the Photograph, ed. Susan Danly and Cheryl Leibold (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994). The History and Power of Writing. By Henri-Jean Martin. Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Pp· xv+ 591; illustrations, notes, index. $39.95. Henri-Jean Martin, professor at the Ecole Nationale des Chartres, treats with dazzling erudition the art of the book and the rise of mass communication in the world. The volume is particularly impressive in the treatment of literacy in the West from the medieval period to the 19th century. Each chapter reviews an astounding amount of data. The book starts with Ramapithecus’s brain capacity, proceeds in gigantic steps through Lucy’s age, Lascaux, Near Eastern tokens, the first scripts of 1048 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Sumer, Egypt, China, and the New World. It finally ends with the invention of the alphabet and its adoption in various parts of the world. Chapter 2 deals with writing materials and texts from clay tablets to papyrus scrolls and parchment codices. The author goes beyond the usual treatment of these subjects by including, for exam ple, interesting discussions on the evolution of the scribal desk, or the advantage of medieval minuscule over roman capital letters. The next chapter surveys the impact of writing in antiquity, in particular on literature, thought, and religion. Chapter 4 discusses the contribu tions of the monastic orders, of Charlemagne and Lombard mer chants in the “resurrection” of literacy in the early medieval period. It includes a sobering account of book burning by the church. Next the reader is given a fascinating tour of a medieval manu scripts library before being introduced to Gutenberg and a discussion of the inventions that paved the way to the printing press, such as paper, woodcuts, and copperplate engravings. Chapter 6 features the book as a product subjected to the laws of the Renaissance market: cost and sale prices, financing and distribution. The discussion in cludes a thoughtful treatment of censorship and Martin Luther’s im pact in bolstering printed communication. Chapter 7 explores the impact of writing on finance, administration, and justice from the 15th to the 18th century. Martin itemizes what papers were kept in a home in the age of the Enlightenment, including the first newspa pers—“occasionnels” and “canards.” The next chapter relates the progress of schooling and the creation of new universities...

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There is something out of the ordinary about this prodigiously energetic historian and French patriot who taunts Paris, where he lives and works, with the cry, Paris will save nothing. At the core of Thuillier's great passion is the province of the Nivernais, his commitment to regional and local history, and his desire to take history back from the nation's professional historians. Although Thuillier is no separatist, he finds in the provinces the richness of France, a key to understanding the modern world and its dramatic transformation of societies and cultures, and a subject capable of leading historians to the writing of a less ideological and faddish history. A conversation with Thuillier is marked by loquacity, energy, and imagination. Moment by moment he stands history on its head with a succession of new subjects and approaches to the past, while hesitating occasionally only to persist, After all, monsieur, you must understand, I am not really a university historian. I am only an amateur historian who works as un petit forlctiorlnaire.'' This humble functionary is anything but that. Born in 1932 in Vaucouleurs, in Jean d'Arc's Lorraine, he is a graduate of Institut d'e'tudes politiques de Paris, Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes, and Ecole nationale d'administration. An ofhvier de l'ordre national du Merite, he serves as a conseiller mal^tre in France's national accounting office the Cour des comptes, where he began his career in 1961. Explaining in large part Thuillier's remarkable capacity to point out and assimilate whole uncharted domains of history, his career has led him from the auditing of French prefecture in Saida, Algeria, to serving as an auditor, technical advisor and public auditor to the national offices of election, labor, education, public health, social security, the National Assembly, and the Cour itself. While pursuing a successful administrative career, Thuillier has served as Director of Studies at Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes (IVe section) and, incredibly, has written 35 books and approximately 300 articles on French history, politics, and administration. His books, which only partially indicate the diversity of his interests and writing, range from the history of administrative training, bureaucracy, fiscal policy and money itself; the history of shipping, drugs, health, work, and women in administration; and the history of everyday life, local and re-

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Ecole Nationale Research Articles

Articles published on Ecole Nationale

A system for motorway management based on risk rate estimation

VI European Meeting on Fire Retardancy of Polymeric Materials

Diels−Alder Dimerization of Cyclopenta[l]phenanthrene (Dibenz[e,g]indene) with Isodibenzindene: A Computational, NMR Spectroscopic, and X-ray Crystallographic Study

The Meta-Instrument

Organização e sistema de gestão: à procura de uma nova coerência

The Political Economy of Reforming the 1992 CAP Reform

Comment on “Zeolite-Modified Electrodes: Intra- versus Extrazeolite Electron Transfer

The First Enantiocontrolled Synthesis of E,E Conjugated Dienes with a Fluorine Atom in the Allylic Position

The History and Power of Writing by Henri-Jean Martin

Synthesis of intermetallic compounds between rare earth and 3d transition elements: M. Febri et al (Ecole Nationale Superieure de Physique, Grenoble, France)

Powder metallurgy processing of hybrid nickel based superalloy parts : Y. Bienvenu et al (Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines de Paris, Evry, France)

Processing and tribological behaviour of compositionally graded tungsten carbide-cobalt : C. Colin et al (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris, Evry, France.)

Satellite cell activation and evolution following muscle denervation in two strains of turkey: [formula omitted], Bakou Serge, Wyers Monique, INRA URA, Ecole Nationale Vétérinaire, CP 3013, 44087 NANTES Cedex 01

International Education and Training at Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chausées/La Formation a l'international a l'Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées

The Impact of Globalisation of Europe's Firms and Industries

Cone-beam reconstruction by the use of Radon transform intermediate functions

Guy Thuillier: "Paris Will Save Nothing"

Special Issue on Japanese-French Congress of Mechatronics

The knight-monks of Vichy France: Uriage, 1940-1945

Organizing Africa's Democrats

Lead the way for us

Editage

Paperpal

R Discovery

Mind the Graph

Ecole Nationale Research Articles

Articles published on Ecole Nationale

A system for motorway management based on risk rate estimation

VI European Meeting on Fire Retardancy of Polymeric Materials

Diels−Alder Dimerization of Cyclopenta[l]phenanthrene (Dibenz[e,g]indene) with Isodibenzindene: A Computational, NMR Spectroscopic, and X-ray Crystallographic Study

The Meta-Instrument

Organização e sistema de gestão: à procura de uma nova coerência

The Political Economy of Reforming the 1992 CAP Reform

Comment on “Zeolite-Modified Electrodes: Intra- versus Extrazeolite Electron Transfer

The First Enantiocontrolled Synthesis of E,E Conjugated Dienes with a Fluorine Atom in the Allylic Position

The History and Power of Writing by Henri-Jean Martin

Synthesis of intermetallic compounds between rare earth and 3d transition elements: M. Febri et al (Ecole Nationale Superieure de Physique, Grenoble, France)

Powder metallurgy processing of hybrid nickel based superalloy parts : Y. Bienvenu et al (Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines de Paris, Evry, France)

Processing and tribological behaviour of compositionally graded tungsten carbide-cobalt : C. Colin et al (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris, Evry, France.)

Satellite cell activation and evolution following muscle denervation in two strains of turkey: [formula omitted], Bakou Serge, Wyers Monique, INRA URA, Ecole Nationale Vétérinaire, CP 3013, 44087 NANTES Cedex 01

International Education and Training at Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chausées/La Formation a l'international a l'Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées

The Impact of Globalisation of Europe's Firms and Industries

Cone-beam reconstruction by the use of Radon transform intermediate functions

Guy Thuillier: "Paris Will Save Nothing"

Special Issue on Japanese-French Congress of Mechatronics

The knight-monks of Vichy France: Uriage, 1940-1945

Organizing Africa's Democrats